The last post was Everything That I Love to Do Depends on My Health. That same principle applies to everything that you need to do. Those are the main two categories that impact your life and getting that right can even improve your mental health. Think about it! There is everything you love to do, everything you need to do, and everything else. If you feel anxious and stressed, do what you love to do, what you need to do, and you can drop everything else. I have found that to be valuable in keeping my own priorities in order.
For most of us, the main thing that we need to do is work to support our families. That is so dependent on our health. I learned that lesson the hard way.
When I developed cancer in 1990, I had been in my solo practice for only 11 years. I shared evening call duty with three other doctors. I had no disability insurance. I was just 43 years old. When I heard I had lymphoma, I immediately understood the threat of poor health to my family. I had two sons that were starting college. I needed major abdominal surgery.
The incision in that surgery extended from my breastbone to my pubic bone. My spleen and several plum-sized malignant lymph nodes were removed. I was in the hospital for five days.
Just two days after discharge, I was back in my office seeing patients until 3 pm every afternoon. There was chemotherapy every Friday (so that I would have the weekend to recover). My on-call partners saved my practice by taking night call until I could handle that additional work. I came out of this experience with over $100,000 in additional debt. It was awful. I had no choice. I did what I needed to do but my health made it so much harder.
I am convinced my diet and obesity set me up to have this aggressive cancer at my young age. My experience from that helped to “make it easier” to change my diet. I knew if I did not change I would not be able to work and would die much sooner than I wanted to.
So I eat real food now. I have lost 70 pounds. Had I not done that, I am pretty sure I would be dead. I had lost my health, and came very close to financial ruin. I hope you never face that yourself. Doing just a few simple things can make a big difference. Many of you just might face same kind of threat.
Ten million Americans have a commercial driver’s license (CDL). Most commercial drivers are men, and the average age is 49. There are 3.6 million professional truck drivers in this country. The trucking industry needs 80,000 more drivers than are available.
We recently ran our proprietary analysis on a large trucking company’s claims data. We found that 60% of their healthcare spending was on heart disease and related conditions like type 2 diabetes. These conditions also represent a threat to a driver’s ability to make a living. Federal health regulations for truck drivers state that the following conditions block the ability to keep driving a truck.
Loss of a foot leg or arm
Limb function impairment that interferes with the ability to drive a truck (stroke)
Diabetes that requires insulin
Diagnosis of heart attack, angina (pain due to a blocked heart artery), congestive heart failure or any other heart disease known to be associated with blackouts, shortness of breath or collapse.
Poorly controlled high blood pressure likely to interfere with his/her ability to operate a commercial motor vehicle safely
Less than 20/40 vision with glasses
These factors that may cause a trucker to lose his license are all related. Diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking cigarettes can cause each of these problems including loss of vision.
The same health factors that generate most of the costs in a trucking company are also most likely to cause a CDL driver to lose his or her license and therefore their livelihood, just what I had been faced with. I knew the best medical care can make a huge difference. It did for me and it can in this industry.
Best medical care is known by health professionals as optimal medical therapy (OMT). Drivers on OMT are one third as likely to lose a leg as those who are in usual care—the care that most of us receive. They are one fifth as likely to have a stroke that interferes with their ability to drive a truck. They are much less likely to progress to needing insulin to control their diabetes. Drivers on OMT are one fourth as likely to have a heart attack and 70% less likely to be in the hospital for congestive heart failure. They are twice as likely to have their blood pressure controlled and one third as likely to have eye problems that can’t be corrected with glasses.
These last couple of years all of us have witnessed what happens when supply chains are disrupted. The country is still dealing with the aftereffects.
Self-insured trucking companies have access to their data and can design their health plan to deliver OMT and protect their drivers and keep those trucks running.
Protect your health so that you can do what you need and want. You only need to understand your health condition(s), what can be done for those conditions, and why it is worth your time to do it.
That is what this site is all about. Preserving health so that you can do what you need to do is so important. That is one of the reasons OMT is critical for people with diabetes and related diseases like high blood pressure and heart attack. You can protect yourself, and by doing that, you can protect your family. Let’s get started! Contact me at whbester@gmail.com to learn more!
Thank you for sharing. Totally agree how our life can be turned into a nightmare and so blessed you are here to share your journey and save health and lives!!!
I'm finding that the older I get, the more important your message becomes - and sometimes it's too late to make the correction. I've always been healthy, I credit that with no smoking. But I gave up exercising recently - it was boring. My body quickly told me that was a mistake - so I'm back on track.